The use of fireplaces is widespread throughout this and other countries. These uses inherently encompass many hazards and nuisances as well as many benefits. These benefits include heat and entertainment. However, due to the expense of firewood, inconveniences associated with chopping and storing ones own firewood, retrieving the firewood to refuel the fireplace, and continually cleaning ashes from the spent firewood, several alternatives have been sought to replace the log-burning fires. In an attempt to replace these fires, obtaining all of the attributes of a wood fire has been difficult in that no substitute has been able to adequately affect the proper color, size, and movement of a wood-fueled flame.
Gas has been commonly used to produce flames in a fireplace and has been used in combination with several different artificial logs to attempt creating the illusion of a real fire. See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,060,396 to Burton; U.S. Pat. No. 4,169,709 to Stima; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,326,854 to Tanner. These devices are combustion simulating logs typically used in conjunction with wood fires as a starter. Such starter logs produce heat and flame to burn alone for several hours but do not mimic a realistic appearance of a traditional wood-burning fire.
Other devices for simulating a wood-burning fire can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,000,162 to Shimek; Us. Pat. No. 5,052,370 to Karabin; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,081,981 to Beal. These devices are non-combustible gas log assemblies used in connection with gas fireplaces. Each of these types of logs suffer from their inability to mimic the appearance of a realistic burning log while providing the requisite heat to the user and improving compliance with combustion standards at the same time.